Miami Vice

Synopsis

Our favourite undercover detectives from the 80’s are back in this update of the TV series. This time around, drug lords and a murder case in South Florida dangerously weave into the personal lives of Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs.

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The digital photography looks like heartsick surveillance footage. John Murphy’s music is a heartbeat. These two undercover cops (Farrell, Foxx) ply their trade with minimal bravado, cool but never trying to be cool. Their every action movie action elicits a reaction, and each instance of gunplay carries consequences of its own. No real heroism in this 21st century To Have and Have Not; just hard work and star-crossed romance.

As cinematic as the movie Miami Vice clearly is—in some ways it’s the apotheosis of Mann’s pop Antonioni artistry—it’s also an exquisite distillation of what made the TV show extraordinary. The movie employs tactics that were no longer formally avant-garde within the vernacular of film in 2006, and certainly not within the widescreen ratio of 2.35:1, but it nevertheless embraces them with an intensity and sincerity worthy of the source.

The film’s sense of dread is vast and oppressive; its fleeting moments of freedom—like a go-fast boat ride that rivals the ending of Mann’s ownHeat as the all-time best use of Moby in a film—are vividly rendered. I’d be lying if I said that I’m not moved by it.